Assignment #8: Daniela Retelny

I am currently involved in a research project in the Human Computer Interaction Lab. The professor (who I will call Jamie) that is in charge of the study is on sabbatical. Therefore, our meetings have a hybrid configuration because we must conference call with her.

Our meetings also relate to Cao et al’s screen sharing research. Each meeting we set up a projector and discuss the documents and images that are displayed on the wall. The meeting leader navigates the screens with the mouse and everyone else just points to what they are referring to. However, occasionally situations arise where people are referring to a particular image or avatar but other people in the group are unsure of exactly which image they are referring to. In these situations, the person has to get up and point to the image they are talking about, which is inefficient and frustrating.

A majority of our communication with Jamie is well supported by the fact that Jamie has all of her information readily accessible to her. Whenever we are discussing a particular topic she can look it over and refresh her memory without coming off rude or unprepared. Jamie can also navigate all of the information on her own rather than depending on our meeting leader to navigate the screen.

Communicating with also Jamie provides us with several obstacles, primarily regarded to screen sharing. Since Jamie cannot see what is being displayed on the wall we have to verbalize what we are currently looking at which can be quite difficult, especially when we display more than one item at a time. In addition, our group tends to switch from document to document relatively quickly and we often times forget to inform Jamie of the switch. This ignorance and forgetfulness really frustrates Jamie and makes her feel left out.

Over the past couple of weeks we have noticed that our collocated group has become much closer to each other than we have to Jamie. This is because we actually meet face-to-face two or three times a week rather than just listening to Jamie on a speakerphone. We really respect Jamie and think she is a great group leader but just as Bos et al. found, it is hard to include her in our in-group when we only communicate with her a couple of times via the phone.

Overall I would improve the experience by adding video and screen sharing capabilities to our meetings and giving each group member a mouse or a way to navigate the screen. Jamie could still have access to her own files but could also witness what we were displaying at our meetings. By being able to see each other face to face, some of the issues related to distant collaboration would be eased and we could communicate more efficiently. This could potentially even make it easier for Jamie to be part of our in-group and not feel so left out.